ramblings of an entrepreneurial madman

Never say “things can’t get any worse”

Because you will find out that yes they can.

I haven’t posted in a few days because nothing has gone well. Leads still have not started coming in, so I called my lead guy and spoke to him for a half hour today. Basically the marketing we are doing is being built and tested specifically for me and a couple other companies, so it’s all new and unpredictable. They’ve done it in the past and know it works, but it takes awhile to get going.

I basically told him my situation and even if the leads end up being kick-ass once I start receiving them, I don’t know if I’ll have the ability to refill because of the lack of revenue I have coming in the past two months. May produced zero business and June is looking like it isn’t going to be much better. That’s 2 months with no new cash flow, and my existing cash flow is dwindling down very rapidly.

He said not to worry about being able to refill immediately and he’ll see what he can do about kicking me some free leads and using me as his “tester” for new lead campaigns he’s trying out so I won’t have to pay for them; which was very cool of him, but I really don’t know how serious he was. The bottom line is that because it’s taken so long to get these leads going, my company has started sinking. The payment for these leads was made almost a month ago and still; nothing.

I spoke to a different lead company yesterday and tried working out some sort of pay per sale campaign. The way that works is your lead provider will send you leads and you only pay once you close a deal. Generally companies won’t do something like that unless they have built an existing relationship with you because if you aren’t closing deals, they aren’t making money. Anyways, it wasn’t something they were interested in, and I wasn’t about to spend money I don’t have on leads when I’m still waiting for an existing order to be filled.

I posted an ad online about finding some volunteer tech/SEO guys to help me with some marketing ideas. I could not pay them anything initially, but I would pay them per deal that closed as a result of the marketing that we produced together. It has the potential to earn whoever is involved at the ground level a shit load of money, but most people don’t think that way. Everyone wants instant gratification and money NOW, instead of paying their dues first. I have yet to receive a response from the ad, and was hoping I’d be able to find some “college nerds,” with some free time on their hands that would be interested.

So what the fuck does all this mean? I’ve pretty much hit rock bottom. I have no more money, existing revenue is going down and I have no means of buying leads to keep driving my business. I still have the option, after these leads start flowing in, of finding an investor or renegotiating my contract with my business partner, however I’m not sure how realistic of an expectation that is at this point.

If I kick ass with the leads and close them through the roof, it will definitely help, but at the end of the day its going to come down to getting some sort of financial support to help me through this slump and with a track record of having two months of bringing in no business, I’m not building much of a case for myself.

Also, from the couple of times I helped my business partner out while he was visiting, I just didn’t get a feeling or a vibe from him that he’d be willing to help me out if I asked for it, and the last time I want to do is put him into an awkward position by asking.

I know I know, I shouldn’t be saying shit like that because I’m just setting myself up for failure, but I’m just trying to be honest with myself. I’m really good at reading people and if I had gotten some sort of feeling from him I definitely would have noticed. I didn’t.

I just took a moment to briefly skim over the past month or so of posts I’ve made and they all are negative and echo the same shit this post does. There hasn’t been anything positive to report in so long. What the fuck am I doing? I don’t want to quit but I also don’t want to put myself into a position with no money and an inability to pay my bills.